This video is accompanied by text. "Many Americans believed that a transcontinental railroad would unify the United States by linking eastern and western points of the rapidly expanding nation. Not everyone, however, agreed where the railroad should ...be built. U.S. minister to Mexico James Gadsden, a Southerner, wanted the route to go through Texas and the New Mexico Territory to the Pacific Ocean. Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, meanwhile, supported a plan to wind the railroad through Chicago and the Nebraska Territory, where he owned a sizable amount of land. Douglas’s proposal, though, faced substantial obstacles—the U.S. government had designated the region as Indian Territory and banned white settlers..." (Professionally produced material with scholarly ideas and arguments.)[more]

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